Meta has suffered a blow after the Court of Appeal dismissed an application challenging the authority of Kenyan courts to handle a case brought by 186 Facebook content moderators.

The social media giant— which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram and Threads among others — argued that the content moderators cannot pursue the legal claim against the company as Meta was not based in Kenya.

The content moderators sued the company and blocked outsourcing firm Samasource Kenya EPZ from declaring them redundant, pending the determination of their case.

But Meta challenged the cases arguing that the Facebook content moderators failed to meet the legal threshold for the court to allow them to serve the foreign firms with the court documents…

The appellate court judges said they were satisfied … it was proper and within the jurisdiction of the Employment and Labour Relations court (ELRC) to intervene, pending the determination of the case…

The content moderators … submitted that Meta and … Samasource Kenya EPZ, started a redundancy programme to get rid of them in retaliation because of a petition … alleging poor working conditions.

She further said most of the moderators who are migrant workers would be forced to leave Kenya, and will lose all meaningful access to justice owing to difficulty in accessing the court…